Farewell, my friends, I'm bound for Canaan
I'm trav'ling through the wilderness;
Your company has been delightful
You, who doth leave my mind distressed.
I go away, behind to leave you
Perhaps never to meet again
But if we never have the pleasure
I hope we'll meet on Canaan's land.

November 03, 2004

Going to Croatan

I'm Going to Croatan. Leaving my scrawl in the dust. Burying my hatchet in a stump. Burning my clothes in a heap.

OK, maybe not.

As ignoble as the sentiment is, it had to be vented.

And, of course, a lot of folks are going to be feeling similarly this morning.

And will be for some time.

The Confidence Man does in fact foresee several exodi from the Democratic Party over this result:

African Americans will accelerate their departure from the party; this departure will be fractured, however. The wealthy and the assimilated will continue to trend Republican. The Northeastern and Upper Midwestern will start to seriously question just what, exactly, the Democrats are accomplishing for them; the question in those locations is whether they push aggressively to take over urban Dem chapters, go Republican, go to some inchoate third party, or Go to Croatan. African Americans in the South will most likely stick with the Dems, as the alternatives there either don't exist or are unacceptable.

"Progressives" will split violently. One-third (the careerists who make a living blogging or working for Lib Establishment organizations such as the Sierra Club) will stick with the Dems. One third will definitively abandon the Dems for the Greens. And one third will Go to Croatan.

Labor will also split in thirds: the larger and more conservative brotherhoods (e.g., the Teamsters, various construction and building-trades organizations) will aggressively flirt with the GOP; the unions that went for Dean in the primaries will see a membership revolt and will snuggle back up to the establishment Dems; and a small coterie of various service organizations will try to make allegiance with the Progressives and go Green or other third party.

The LGBT community will overall trend leftward: Republicans will move to the Dems, Dems will move to the Greens, Greens will Go to Croatan. And across the spectrum, gays will flee to urban areas and blue states, reversing any exurbanization trends among the demographic.

"Centrist" DLC types will rive in twain, both trending away from the Democratic Party: half (mostly in the South and in foreign relations) will eventually defect to the GOP and half will attempt to start a centrist coalition with the disaffected moderate Republicans.

Hollywood, for the most part, will remain solidly in the Dems' camp. The usual opportunists at the very top of the Hollywood food chain, following the Lew Wasserman model, will finally ingratiate themselves with the Bush-Rove-Cheney GOP. (Part of that movement will also entail unceremoniously dumping Billy Tauzin from his new position as head of the MPAA in favor of a Repub.) Some of the more activist types will probably go Green.